PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide, Second Edition

Specialized HotSyncs

Under normal circumstances, the PalmPilot and the PC bring each other up-to-date during a HotSync, including all the various programs’ data. But you can tailor the way a HotSync works, depending on your circumstances. For example, you might decide to HotSync only your Address Book, that’s the only data you’ve used all week. By limiting what gets transferred, you speed up the HotSync.

Another example: suppose somebody has completely messed up your appointments in Palm Desktop. Your PalmPilot still contains an up-to-date schedule; using a special HotSync option, you can tell your software not to compare the PalmPilot with the PC, but instead to wipe out the PC’s contents, replacing it with what’s on the PalmPilot now.

The Concept of Conduits

In your PalmPiloteering life, you can’t avoid encountering the term conduit. In Palm lingo, a conduit is the piece of software responsible for HotSyncing one kind of data. Each Palm program—Memo Pad, Address Book, and so on—has its own conduit, which you can switch on or off independently. When you buy a program like IntelliSync, which lets you HotSync directly to such common PC calendar and address books as Now Contact, Outlook, ACT, and Sidekick, you’re buying new conduits.

The master switches for the PalmPilot’s own conduits are in Palm Desktop (Windows) or HotSync Manager (Mac). You can read more about these programs in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9; for now, check out the Custom or Conduit Settings command in the HotSync menu. ...